Shadows of Light
by VerdiTheTRex
Summary: The Black Swan is scrambling. Their allies, the Vengeance have been defeated, leaving only the strong survivors to search for the rest. And with the Neverseen plotting their next attack, will the friends be able to regroup as a whole or will the Neverseen finally finish off Sophie, once and for all? SOPHITZ, SOKEEFE, DARELLA, TIANA, BIANEX, FINH
1. Prologue

**(A/N) Hello! I decided to make a sequel to _On the Run_ , even though I only got one request. Hopefully this one won't get abandoned. ;P ****And prepare for lots of OCs, 'cause y'know, you kinda need OCs so they can die later. *grins creepily* I won't explain anything right now, so on to the story!**

 **Prologue**

THOUGHTS FLOODED THROUGH Sophie's head, overwhelming her. Thoughts of the ones who were lost. And the feelings. So many.

Panic. Anger. Grief. Anxiety. All of them. Too many. Too painstakingly clear. Too strong.

Everyone was there, right before her eyes, but she had been too careless to notice them. All of the clues were in reach, but she had knocked them farther away. Now it was too late. There was only one thing to do.

Run. Run as far away as she could. Shut out anything—any _one—_ that came near. She'd just end up hurting them more. And herself.

The darkness was coming near. But it was always a shadow of something bigger. Something more important. More intricate. Too complicated.

It would swallow everything up. They had to shine the light in the shadows.

 **(A/N) Wow. That was hard to write even though it was short. I've been having lots of writer's block (or maybe I just hate all of my first drafts), so sorry for the late updates. I have like half of a chapter ready and will update the rest of my other stories soon, I just need ideas (for _Happiness and Tragedies,_ I guess I'm open for suggestions). So yeah. Sorry for the shortness, and byeeeee!**


	2. Chapter 1: Flashbacks

**(A/N) Hi guys! Here's the first chapter for the new story. It was _so_ hard to write because 1) I kept changing the title, 2) School sucks, and 3) I hate my first draft thingies. I mean, I don't really make first drafts, I kinda just write and the edit, but you get the point. Gosh, even the author's note is hard to write! And I don't have a Review Response because I'm posting this like ten minutes after I posted the prologue. So I guess I'll stop bickering and let you read!**

 **Chapter 1: Flashbacks**

SOPHIE GROGGILY ROLLED OUT OF BED as streams of the morning sunlight peered through the one window of her small room. Waking up was... different. She missed her old bed at Havenfield, she missed her friends, she missed Grady and Edaline, she missed everything. Now everything's not the same.

She trudged across the room to grab a simple grey tunic and a black cloak to put on. There was a long day ahead of her.

Sophie swung open the wooden door of her sad little room. She marched out, ready to face the day ahead.

Walking down a narrow hallway, she recounted the horrors she had experienced in the past couple weeks. Deaths. So. Many. Deaths. She hated to admit to herself that some of them were because of her.

Sophie turned to the left and walked through another wooden door. She found herself in a spacious room with lots of fluffy couches. Many elves were sitting and socializing with each other. There was easily a few hundred elves. But those are all the known survivors of the war. _Survivors._ That's all they were now?

Many people greeted Sophie as she walked to the room's exit: a crystal archway. She waved to the people who stopped their conversations to look at her, but quickly hurried out of the building, not wanting to be the center of attention.

When she was outside, she tripped on a tiny pebble, no bigger that her thumb tip. With no one to catch her, she fell and scraped her knee. She winced at the painful reminder of what was before, and what was the after.

 _Her friends._

 _Her family._

 _Everything was fine. It was great. Perfect. And then one day tore it all apart._

 _And here was the after: the ruins of what was once there before._

 _Is that what the after always has to be like?_

 _The remains of before?_

Then the flashbacks took over.

 _Lady Gisela gave Keefe, Fitz, and Sophie identical leaping crystals. She explained that they would take them to an always-changing safe place._

 _Although the friends were still suspicious, they took the crystals to satisfy Gisela. They asked her how they could trust her, and she showed he Vengeance cloak._

 _Then everything went wrong. From thin air, figures wearing cloaks bearing the Neverseen eye grabbed everyonr but Gisela._

 _"Stop!" Sophie yelled. She fought the Neverseen person to raise her hands and prepared to inflict on everyone._ Everyone. _She didn't care that she would hurt her friends._

 _"And you'll do what?" A painfully familiar voice said. Sophie felt that she should know who it was, but she didn't. The more she racked her brain the farther the answer seemed, so she gave up._

 _Sophie wanted to say, "Kill all of you!" At the black-robed fools, but she knew she couldn't make good on the threat. So she looked at Keefe._

 _"We'll... use it." Keefe said._ What is "it?" _Thought Sophie. Before she could recall any memories of Keefe finding something, a deep, thunderous laugh echoed through the corridor._

 _"You have no idea what you'll get yourself into." Said the figure. That one seemed to be the leader, so if they can take him down and then..._

 _"And I know what you're doing." He said, pointing to Sophie with a black gloved hand. "You're trying to figure out how to save everyone in the room and take us alive as prisoners, then be the hero who saved everyone and couldn't bear to let someone die. But in the end, you'll soon realize that you can't."_

 _"Wrong." Sophie said with a mischievous look on her face. "I'm thinking of ways to kill you without hurting anyone else."_

 _"You can't. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Not when we have this." They said, pulling a stained purple disk out of his cloak. "All we have to do is press this button and you'll all be knocked out cold on the floor, maybe even dead. So you have a choice: come with us, or die."_

 _The Neverseen let go of the friends and backed away. The group exchanged looks, each knowing what decision was right. "We'll stay." They said in unity, bracing for the sedative._

 _The figures pressed the button. Almost instantly, the world began to black out. The last thing Sophie remembered was glaring at a smiling Lady Gisela and vowing to never let her escape again._

Everything came back into focus. She realized that she had a job to do. So she trudged on through the vast, rocky plains, hoping to find something, someone, or anything that survived.

That was when she spotted a dark green tent sitting under a boulder with light flickering inside of it. Sophie rushed towards it, only to be sucked into the darkness again.

 **(A/N) Well, I guess that was decent. I think I'm gonna make Tam and Linh more important characters. I don't know. Now I'm off to starting _another_ chapter on my other story. And I'm still deciding between Tophie and Sophitz/SoKeefe. I feel like Tophie is under appreciated, but there's still lots of those stories out there, but at the same time, there's _so_ much Sophitz and SoKeefe. So which one?**


	3. Chapter 2

**(A/N)** **Hi guys! So it's been winter break for me for two weeks or so, but I forgot to say so. And I've been on vacation but didn't put myself on semi-hiatus, 'cause I actually got more than what I normally get done regularly. So I updated lots of stories there.** **Shoutout to lovekotlc for being the first reviewer.**

 **And remember, this is my spin-off of book 4 and 5 and 6. Sophie and the crew hasn't met Tam and Linh.**

 **And FYI, I'm changing the summary to something BETTER.**

 **RR:**

 **lovekotlc: Okay! I'll do mostly Sophitz and incorporate a couple more ships in there. Thanks for reading my other story too! And for being the first reviewer.**

 **Chapter Two**

Sophie could hear some voices faintly through her unconsciousness. She caught the word "Sophie" and "alive." Sophie... who was that? The name was calling to her. She felt like she should know who it was... was it... her? Who was she?

"...survived? I thought... no one..." She was picking up more words. Surviving? What did Sophie survive? No one else... what was that supposed to mean?

"Linh, can you grab one of those emergency jolting elixirs?" The voice asked, their voice clearer now. Linh... who is that?

Sophie felt a cold liquid being poured down her throat. It cooled down her body until she felt a strange shock. Then again. It jolted her body upwards, making her sit up, and she found herself in a dimly lit tent, no bigger than a human car. She was laying on a white sheet next to a portable table covered in elixirs. "Where... am I?" She managed to rasp to a black haired boy with silver-tipped bangs.

His face seemed to light up, despite his seemingly dark demeanor. "Linh," He called. "She's awake!"

Linh, the girl who the boy called, rushed over to where him and Sophie sat. "It really is her..." She breathed.

Sophie was confused. Now that she was fully awake and aware, these people shouldn't have been camping so close to the survivors. Everyone had been rounded up in a couple of square miles, and these people were just outside of the structure.

"How are you–" The boy covered her mouth. He looked around like he heard something, then removed his hand.

"Sorry. You were saying?"

Sophie took a deep breath. "How were you living here without being caught?"

"You mean by the 'gatherers?'" Tam asked. When Sophie nodded, he snorted. "Their security is too easy to slip around."

The boy and girl didn't look like much to Sophie. How could two kids evade professional gatherers? Sophie made a mental note to tell them to do another search in case there were others like these kids.

"And you are..." Sophie prompted to the boy. He shrugged.

"No one really cares who we were where we came from, but my name is Tam. This is Linh," He nodded to the girl who waved shyly.

"You're really... Sophie?" Linh whispered.

"Yeah, that's me." _How do they know who I am?_ Sophie thought to herself.

Tam and Linh shared a look. "So where have you been all of this time?" Tam asked skeptically.

"What do you mean, where have you guys been?"

Tam and Linh exchanged another look. "With an organization called 'The Neverseen'" Tam said cautiously. "And they've instructed us to bring you to them.

"The Neverseen?"

"Yeah." Both Tam and Linh agreed.

"No. This is bad. No no no. Why didn't you guys–" Black cloaked figures burst into the tent with pieces of cloth dripping with sedatives. As they pressed one to Sophie's mouth, she began to black out.

The last this she remembered was Linh giving her a sad smile and mouthing something. She couldn't make out what it was, but whatever it was, she didn't care. These kids she barely knew betrayed her. And she wouldn't let them get away with that.

* * *

"So, Sophie." A deep voice startled Sophie out of her dreamless sleep. "I see you've met Tam and Linh."

Sophie refused to open her eyes. Refused to speak. She wouldn't risk giving away any secrets or locations. She wouldn't answer any of their interrogations.

"Ah, not talking, I see." It boomed again. "Well, I'll give you two choices. Sit here and die, or answer our questions and join us."

Sophie finally cracked her eyelids open a bit. Then more until they were fully open. "You expect _me_ to join you?" She asked. She was startled to find nobody in front of her, but she refused to flinch in case they were watching. She refused to show any emotion.

"Well, not exactly." Sophie could make out some male-ness to the voice. At least she wasn't talking to someone she had never seen. It was probably Brant or Fintan talking. "But if I show you something that'll make you angry and reckless, then maybe you might." Light flared around the dark room so Sophie could see what the room was. A theatre of sorts. She had expected the typical dark, cramped corner in a hideout, but she was surprised when there was a huge auditorium around her. It was quite fancy to say the least. Opal walls, red velvet curtains, dark oak seats, nothing Neverseen-ish. The huge, blank screen was the center of attention.

Suddenly, the screen showed an image. Of a figure tied to a chair. Someone... she knew. _Keefe._ Then another figure next to him. _Fitz._ And more. _Biana. Dex._ Each was more angering, more heartbreaking, more– _no._ She wouldn't let the Neverseen break her.

"About being angry, will it change anything if I describe their screams as we broke them, one by one? How your friends yelled and shouted that Sophie would save the? Or how they had to watch each other break? How I saved the one closest to you for last, so he could see what happens when you are on the wrong side of the divide?"

Sophie tried to think of who he was talking about. The screen flashed and zoomed in on Keefe before she could, interrupting her thoughts.

"We know who you care about, Sophie. You can join us, or watch them suffer more."

Sophie stared blankly at the screen, betraying any emotion that she felt. She fought off all of the tears that were on the verge of spilling out. She just _imagined_. Imagined Keefe encouraging her to make the right choice. Fitz pushing her to be honest. Biana comforting her, letting her know she wasn't the only one. Dex reminding her she had an amazing best friend. But she couldn't listen to them. Not unless she wanted them to survive. And there was only one way to save them.

"Deal." Sophie whispered.

 **(A/N) And... there's your cliffhanger. If you liked this, please remember to review. And by the way, when the "voice" was describing her friends suffering, I know I kinda used the _*Spoiler/Nightfall Reference Alert*_ Vespera tactic. _*Spoiler/Nightfall Reference Over*_ If you read Nightfall, you know. I don't think that was a spoiler, but I'll put "Spoiler Alert" anyways. 'Kay, bye!**


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